


Shipwreck

by DarlaBlack



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Love, Post-Break Up, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 05:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14993675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack
Summary: Post-breakup (set around 2015), Scully attempts to go on a date, but her attention is drawn elsewhere.





	Shipwreck

The hairbrush snagged in her wet hair and she made a face. Scully stared into the mirror, poked at the lines around her eyes, knew for certain she was doing absolutely the wrong thing. Still, she put on makeup and checked her phone for messages. The apartment was silent and cold, uncluttered, bare. Everything was in its perfect, terrible place. She didn’t know how to dress for this. She hadn’t been on a date since 1993, unless you included whatever the fuck that had been with Jerse. She and Mulder hadn’t dated. They’d gone straight from friendly-professional to absolute, life-swallowing entanglement. They were only ever suits or pajamas, never the awkward, performative display of courtship. They were corpses and danger and then raw, crushing fervor, together-alone contra the blood-smeared world.

She tried not to think of him, but each swipe of mascara, the spritz of perfume, the tug of her sweater over her head—every action was a betrayal. She felt it in her bones. Where was he now? Alone in their house, drowning in newspaper clippings, unshowered and unshaved, severed from the world of the living by obsession and shadow. And she had left him there.

She straightened herself against this thinking, told herself that she needed this, that it wasn’t a cruelty. It was dinner with a man, a fellow doctor.  _It’s a knife in the guts, Dana_.

Dinner was fine. The conversation was fine. She ate pasta and green beans, smiled agreeably, made occasional jokes (nothing  _too_  funny, nothing crass, nothing interesting) and clamped down the feeling that she was a traitorous wretch.

“So, what about you, Dana?”

Dana.  _Dana Dana Dana Dana_. Fuck.

“Do you have any kids?”

His name was Jason, and he was a middle-aged divorcé who probably shared a comfortable, if emotionally distant, relationship with his two children. Somewhere in the world was a fourteen-year-old boy with her eyes and Mulder’s soft brown hair, probably his penchant for baseball, self-absorption, and overwrought language, too: an awkward, gangly comingling of their DNA—sharp insight and dangerous credulity—who would never know this disastrous state of things.

“I, um…” Jesus, how to answer a question like that? “It’s complicated. I have a son, but he doesn’t live with me.”

“Ah,” Jason nodded, probably imagining some reasonable story about a nasty divorce and an estrangement. It was easier that way, she supposed.

The conversation slumped along, ostensibly pleasant but as flat as that evening two decades ago that had convinced her only to dive deeper into that basement office and all its maddening, impossible adventures. She probably wasn’t being fair to this man, but she hadn’t really expected this to go anywhere. She wasn’t sure, really, what she had expected.

Their conversation was cut short by a buzz from her phone.

“Sorry, excuse me,” she said. “Could be the hospital.”

But it wasn’t. It was him. She read his manic jumble of words, heart in her throat and panic rising:

_“Hey, Scully, do you remember the case in Green Bank, WV where the teenagers were disappearing in the forest and coming out comatose? I know you said it was different from the Bellefleur case, but I was thinking it was 17 years ago and maybe there’s some connection—“_

A second text followed:  _“to that other cyclical case, not Tooms, but the one with the masks in Kentucky? Maybe it’s connected to this Appalachian folklore about death in threes and a miner’s curse, but I was hoping you could come and take a look at some of these stories before I send out a few emails since it’s not far away.“_

“Everything okay?” The man was looking at her, but she hardly noticed.

_Oh, Mulder_ , she thought. She looked up at John or Jim or whatever his name was. Jason. “I’m sorry, I—“ Just then, another text popped up:  _“Can you come?”_

“I think I’m going to have to cut the night short. It looks like there’s an emergency.”

Disappointment on his face. “Oh.”

She could be angry at this interruption. She could be annoyed at the way Mulder intruded on every attempt she made to extricate herself from what had seemed so toxic six months ago. But she wasn’t. He’d texted her. He’d reached a hand out, even a manic, desperate, digital hand. She was so, so grateful.

She texted back:  _“I’m on my way.”_

_+_

An hour later she was in front of the house taking deep breaths in her car, still in what passed for a “date” outfit. He needed her and she’d come.

She found him where she expected to, in roughly the state she’d imagined. “Oh, Mulder, oh—“ she said when she saw him there, disheveled and dirty, the room so cluttered she could barely find him. “Mulder, what—“

His eyes moved up to hers, full of ghosts and glassy like fever. He was on the floor cross-legged, surrounded by open books and stacks of papers. She fell to her knees beside him and touched his forehead, ran her fingers through sweaty, greasy hair.

“You look so good, Scully,” he rasped.

There were tears pushing at her eyelids now. She took his hand and pulled him up. “Come here, Mulder, you need to get cleaned up.”

In the bathroom, she ran the shower hot and helped him with his clothes. “Will you be okay, or do you need help?” she asked as she nudged him toward the spray.

She could tell he wanted to make a joke, but he didn’t seem to have the energy. “I’ll be okay.”

Afterward, when he was toweled and dressed in a clean tee and flannel pants, she ran her hand along his jaw—he had almost a full beard again. “Mulder, have you shaved since I saw you last?”

“When was that?” He asked, innocent, oblivious.

“Three weeks ago,” she said. He frowned and shook his head. “Do you want to shave?”

He seemed a bit confused. “You don’t like it.”

She held both hands up to his beard now, letting the small, stiff hairs tickle her fingers. “I like it.”

He bent and rubbed his cheek against hers, which made her laugh like always. “You smell so fucking good, Scully.” His hands were under her sweater, and she knew she should pull away. She should check his medication, get him into bed, then get in her car and drive home where she could call him in the morning from a saner, more rational place. But she could feel herself pulled to him like a helpless magnet, caught in his gravitational pull, yoked like subatomic particles. He was all the forces at once, her unifying theory. She let him touch her breasts, let him bury his face against her neck and place hot, wet kisses there. When his hand went to her fly, though, she squeezed his forearm.

“Mulder,” she said, a warning.

“Please, Scully,” he growled. He pulled back to look at her, hooded eyes so full of anguish, so lost. “Stay.”

They were going about this the wrong way. This wasn’t any path to healing, only to desperate, short-lived comfort and a balm on the shame she’d been tamping down all night. But the way his hands felt on her skin was like rain on sun-parched grass and she was drinking him in against her better judgment. She pulled his mouth against hers and whispered into him, “Just tonight.”

He pulled her to their bed, and she caught herself thinking of it that way still—theirs. It would always be theirs. She couldn’t imagine that this separation would be permanent, and yet she could not be the one to fix it. She couldn’t demand that he love her as she needed to be loved. She couldn’t will him to choose her over the shadows. But all that was a conversation they’d already had, and one they would surely have again. For now she only wanted to feel him on her skin, inside her and surrounding every part of her. She needed him to wash away her guilt for leaving, even if it didn’t last. They writhed together in the cool of their bedroom, familiar hands and mouths finding well-known secret places. He filled her body and her senses. They claimed each other with every grip, every thrust, every groan muffled against a hot shoulder.

“Oh God, Scully, I love you,” he mumbled into her neck as he came, and she hitched a sob into the darkness at the unfairness of it all. Her tears wetted his chest and she came around him as he softened. They clung to each other like castaways on a life-raft, bucking against a storm.

In the morning, she left without a word.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written based on some tumblr prompts I requested as I was trying to get back on track with my tone/voice (everything was coming out way too sweet and fluffy--not my thing). Thanks for reading!
> 
> tumblr: spookydarlablack


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